Prince Andrew used to “shout and scream” if any of his 60 teddy bears were put in the wrong place.
The Duke of York is said to have an extensive collection of cuddly toys carefully arranged on a bed and royal staff were even issued a laminated photo of the furry menagerie to ensure they were all put back in the right place after cleaning because the 61-year-old prince would fly into a rage if they weren’t exactly how he liked them.
Former protection officer Paul Page – who had access to Andrew’s private quarters when he worked in Royalty and Specialist Protection Command between 1998 and 2004 – told Ranvir Singh on upcoming ITV documentary ‘Ghislaine, Prince Andrew and the Paedophile’: “It had about 50 or 60 stuffed toys positioned on the bed and basically there was a card the inspector showed us in a drawer and it was a picture of these bears all in situ.
“The reason for the laminated picture was if those bears weren’t put back in the right order by the maids, he would shout and scream.”
Royal writer Elizabeth Day previously recalled coming face-to-face with one of Andrew’s bears and finding his interest “weird”.
Writing in 2019 about a meeting a decade before, she said: “I was told to wait in a corridor where my only other companion was an oversized teddy bear squashed into a seat. When I was ushered in to meet Prince Andrew, I asked him about it. He sniggered and told me it had been a wedding gift from his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson.
“Apparently he had found the bear waiting for him when he got into the horse-drawn carriage that was to take them from Westminster Abbey to their reception. I remember that he found this extremely funny, even several years after the event.
“It seemed rather strange to me that a grown man should be so amused by the presence of a stuffed toy, but I suppose the English upper classes have a long history with teddy bears used as transitional objects to express emotions they might feel uncomfortable with.
“I wondered if this was someone who had never really grown up because he had never had to. Here he was, taking up space in his mother’s house, carrying out a made-up job to keep him entertained and still having a teddy bear his ex-wife had given him. It was weird.”
Last week, it was ruled a lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre against the prince can move forward.
Giuffre has accused convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – who took his own life in August 2019 – and his one-time girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell of arranging and forcing her into having sex with the prince in 2001, when she was 17.
Andrew has repeatedly denied Giuffre’s allegations and his legal team recently argued to get her lawsuit dismissed, citing a 2009 deal and $500,000 settlement she agreed with Epstein.
However, the judge in New York recently ruled that the case could continue.
The documentary will explore how Andrew became embroiled in the sex trafficking scandal surrounding Epstein and Maxwell.